@ta15151: That's only one definition of wean. Another definition, (the one relevant here) is: "to accustom to something from an early age —used in the passive especially with on "

Bought your book! I recently finished a book on Fiddler (http://fiddlerbook.com); I ended up starting it years later that I might have but for your 2007 post "Don't buy this book." Sales have been slow but steady, and while it took 9 months of work, I'm glad I did it. A few "pluses" to book-writing: First, it's something parents and other folks (your "clueless and irrelevant" category?) can tangibly hold and appreciate. It's probably the only way my grandmother will ever have any idea what the heck a "Fiddler Web Debugger" is and why someone might use one. Second, it's tangible. Many people have contributed to Fiddler over the years, and I can inscribe a paperback copy and send it to them as a "Thank you." The fact that many of my recipients already bought the ebook is nice, but so far they've all been happy to get the inscribed "Dead Trees" version. Third, writing a book makes you think very very hard about what you're writing about, and with a different mindset. The Fiddler book took quite a bit longer to write because I made hundreds of improvements to Fiddler while I was writing the book, *because* I was writing the book. Every time I thought of something interesting to explain, I began to explain it, then realized that whatever it was shouldn't have been so complicated in the first place, and I'd go fix Fiddler itself to avoid the problem. In other cases, explicitly writing out everything you can do with Fiddler made me recognize some important (and in hindsight, obvious) gaps, and go implement those features. Fourth, I got to choose what to write about. Fiddler is insanely powerful, but after watching people "in the field" use it, it was plain that most of its functionality is completely unknown to the vast majority of users. While some users watch the videos and read the blog posts, it was clear that there are some number of folks for which a complete book with an end-to-end explanation of the tool is the best way to learn it. Fifth, it gives you an appreciation for other authors that you may never get otherwise. Marathon runners probably have more respect for other marathon runners than the general public ever will, simply because they know how grueling it is to run 26.2 in a way that someone who hasn't never will. I think the same is probably true for book-writers. From the financial point-of-view, it's true that authoring it wasn't a great use of my time. Having read a bunch of posts like yours and Resig's, I realized that going the traditional publisher route was a bad deal for both the reader and for me-- the Fiddler book would have been ~$30 and I'd see maybe two or three of that. Instead, I self-published on CreateSpace.com and Lulu.com. It's a better deal for the reader (the paperback is $18 and the ebook is $10) and it's a better deal for me (I get about $6 and $8 respectively). While a traditional publisher would have probably netted me an advance of a few thousand bucks (perhaps more than I'll make) I frankly prefer the "honesty" of being solely responsible for my book's sales, and the often happy feeling I get when I (obsessively?) check sales stats and found that I sold a handful more copies overnight.

[[You get a plain old HTTP connection until you log in, at which point they automatically switch to HTTPS encryption. Makes sense.]] Actually, no, it's completely insecure if the login form is delivered over HTTP. A network based attacker can steal your credentials by changing the form. [[I agree, and encryption should be a toggle on the web server, no certificate, red tape or other unrelated stuff required.]] Encryption without authenticity is neither secure or useful. [[SSL was limited to one domain and one IP]] That's fixed using SNI, which is available on most platforms, although interestingly not IE6 and some mobile platforms.

typo: excerise